SteelSeries makes some excellent gaming keyboards, but its products tend to be expensive. Now the company has launched some more affordable products that aim to bring its attractive and comfortable designs to a wider audience. The most interesting of these products is the $99.99 Apex 5, an RGB keyboard with per-key backlighting and a “hybrid mechanical” switch that feels and sounds like a mechanical keyboard but uses the membrane actuation found on budget and laptop keyboards. SteelSeries has managed to create one of the better mid-range gaming keyboards around.
For most typists, there are two categories of keyboards: membrane keyboards and mechanical keyboards. With the former, when you press a key, you press a rubber dome that both activates the signal and provides resistance to return the key to its original position. With mechanical keyboards, pressing each key flips a switch that completes a circuit, and the key feel comes from the combination of that switch and a spring that pushes each key back to its original position. Among enthusiasts and gamers willing to pay more for keyboards, there is a fairly clear hierarchy: mechanical keyboards are usually preferred, but require more parts and more expensive materials.
Hybrid keyboards are designed to make up the difference. They use membrane keys to actuate the keys, which is cheaper to manufacture, but also include mechanical elements so you get the visceral comfort of the sound and feel of a switch. Until now, there has only been one widely available hybrid gaming keyboard, Razer’s 2017 Ornata Chroma, whose “mecha membrane” switches use membrane mechanics to control movement and actuation, but simulate the feel of a mechanical keyboard.
There are technical advantages to a mechanical keyboard over a membrane keyboard, especially in gaming where the demands for speed and accuracy are higher, but hybrid switches successfully offer the most tangible benefits of switching.
Even though it’s been a few years, the Apex 5 directly answers the Ornata.
The principle is the same: each key is triggered when the key is pressed on a membrane button. However, the Apex 5’s “Hybrid Blue” switches are spring-loaded, so pressing the key feels like a mechanical keyboard. According to SteelSeries, this is a more accurate melding of the two switch designs.